Balancing her creativity with the responsibilities of her day-to-day life has been a challenge, but a worthwhile one for grace shinhae jun (who uses lowercase lettering in the spelling of her name).
After connecting with dance as a creative outlet when she was growing up, she went on to earn her bachelor’s, master’s, and a doctorate in history/choreography, dance, and theater and drama from UC San Diego, UC Irvine, and Sarah Lawrence. In 2001, after earning her master’s, she founded bkSOUL, a performance company that combines dance, poetry, and live music in collaboration with artists and organizers to focus on social justice.
“I’d recently moved back to California from New York, and at that time, there wasn’t anyone in San Diego who was creating dance from a hip hop perspective and bridged hip hop vernacular movement and modern dance techniques,” she says, noting her collaboration with spoken word poet Ant Black, poets Kendrick Dial and Rudy Francisco, guitarist/singer Jesse Mills, and cellist Loren Dempster. “bkSOUL was and is a space for us as collaborators to make work that reflected our stories, our communities, and our lineages.”
In addition to her work in her performance company, she’s also an assistant professor of dance at UC San Diego, a co-founder of Asian Solidarity Collective, co-creator of the Asian American Dance Festival, and her work has been included in Trolley Dances, the WOW Festival, the San Diego International Fringe Festival, and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Today, jun, 50, lives in City Heights with her husband, Jesse Mills, and their two children. She took some time to talk about her work, the way that hip hop culture expanded her social awareness, and the joy she gets from teaching other young dancers.
Q: In the article, “Asian American Activation Through Hip Hop Dance,” you talk about being in seventh grade and spending time with your friends, Danielle and Robin, and learning about hip hop, R&B, and Black culture. Was this your introduction to dance? To the dancer you would become? If so, can you talk about what this initial experience was like for you?
A: My movement training began with Korean traditional dances like buchaechum (fan dance). I didn’t take any formal dance classes until college. I danced with friends, like most teenage girls; I watched “Soul Train” on Saturdays, and recorded “In Living Color” Fly Girls’ routines on our VCR and watched them over and over to learn them. I was also a gymnast and played basketball and volleyball, and loved to swim. All of these movement experiences influenced my love of dance and opened a path to pursuing dance as a career.
Q: What was it that appealed to you about the movement of the body as a form of creative expression?
A: Movement helped me break stereotypes of my Asian American female body. I did not always like to share what I was feeling or thinking, especially with people I did not trust. One thing I always tell my students is to take up space and defy the stereotypes that they experience in their raced and gendered bodies. I also feel blessed to have grown up with the music of the ‘80s and ‘90s, many which sampled the music of the prior generation. There was something about hip hop music’s groove that created a space to be fully myself.
What I love about City Heights…
I like that it’s central and close to everything and has very diverse neighbors.
Q: Your bio on your UC San Diego webpage says that you’re “a child of a South Korean immigrant, a North Korean refugee…” Can you talk a bit about your home life growing up, and the kind of influence that’s had on who you’ve become as an artist?
A: I come from a very loving and supportive home. My parents, my grandparents, aunts, and uncles lived through deeply traumatic experiences. Knowing my family’s history and the choices my ancestors made, I carry their pain, but I also carry their joy and ability to persevere.
Q: Your scholarship includes publications in the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies, and the title of your dissertation was “Moving Hip Hop: Corporeal Performance and the Struggle Over Black Masculinity.” Early on, before your formal education, what appealed to you about hip hop?
A: Much of the hip hop I listened to made me aware of communities beyond my own. Hip hop culture was developing as I was becoming a teenager and into adulthood, and it provided a space where I began to understand who I was, what interested me, and what my values were. It was a space where I wasn’t confined to stifling cultural assumptions tied to my gender.
Q: What would you say has sustained your relationship with hip hop?
A: Teaching, creating, researching, and connecting to others keeps me grounded in hip hop. I have been teaching hip hop movement and culture for over 25 years to students at UC San Diego, San Diego City College, transcenDANCE Youth Arts, and other campuses and studios throughout San Diego and beyond. My respect for the creators of this art form keeps me wanting to learn more and share more.
Q: You mentioned that as you look back to when you were younger, you can “see how hip hop set my mind open in a particular way and I was receiving things differently,” and you mention Black creators like Spike Lee and Public Enemy. What are some ways that you recognize your mind opening up, your perspective widening, as a result?
A: It was a space where I wasn’t confined to stifling cultural assumptions tied to my gender. As a teen growing alongside the flourishing of hip hop music, productions, and media, my awareness of race and gender was heightened. For my English class, I asked if I could read “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” for my report. I wanted to learn more about Black history and Black historical figures mentioned in hip hop. This was also during the time of the Los Angeles Uprising where I saw and experienced the racial tensions between the Black and Korean communities of LA and watched four white police officers acquitted after beating Rodney King. I ended up majoring in history because I wanted to learn more.
Q: You’re also a founder of Asian Solidarity Collective, a community organization you started in 2016 with DJ Kuttin Kandi, after the shooting of Alfred Olango, to condemn anti-Blackness and build cross-racial solidarity (the organization restructured in 2023 and now focuses on programs for formerly incarcerated youth and adults). Can you talk about how your consciousness has been informed when it comes to issues of social justice, resistance, and liberation?
A: I experienced and witnessed racism at a very young age. I couldn’t articulate it then, but the proximity to the L.A. Uprising and the aftermath, and being immersed in hip hop culture, provided examples of structural racism. I took a class with Dr. George Lipsitz in my first year of college where we read about hip hop and how it was a means of resistance. Lipsitz also marched alongside students against Prop 209 (a 1996 California ballot initiative to “eliminate state and local government affirmative action programs in the areas of public employment, public education, and public contracting…”); it was the first time I saw a professor who I deeply admired marching in solidarity. I was inspired and encouraged.
Q: Why is it important to you to focus your work in a way that pushes back on systems of oppression rooted in anti-Blackness and anti-Indigeneity?
A: Because I think of ways in which my family has suffered under oppression and how much was lost as a result.
Q: What currently inspires you in your art?
A: Currently I have been centering on my lineage — my grandmothers, my mother, and my daughter. I am looking back to understand what to bring forward.
Q: What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
A: My mom would always tell me to fill up my gas tank when I had the time before it was empty and not wait until the last minute. I’ve applied this thought to other aspects of my life.
Q: What is one thing people would be surprised to find out about you?
A: I started out as a visual arts major.
Q: Please describe your ideal San Diego weekend.
A: My ideal weekend would either be at the beach or at a hip hop jam.
To suggest a notable San Diegan for the One-on-One series, contact Lisa Deaderick at lisa.deaderick@sduniontribune.com.